As I said in my initial reaction to the verdict, I was surprised that serial sex abuser and now convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) was found guilty on all charges. I had heard many legal experts opine before that of all the cases that were brought against him, this was the weakest as it hinged on a combination of fairly esoteric offenses and that the key witness against SSACFT Michael Cohen was himself someone who was an admitted liar. Since a conviction requires a unanimous verdict that is beyond reasonable doubt, all it required was for one juror to hold out for there to be a mistrial, which would be trumpeted by the Maganuts as an acquittal.

In addition, SSACFT is a former president and though that should not be a factor in their consideration, jurors are human and I thought that it was unlikely that jurors would convict him unless they thought that the case was a slam dunk. The fact that the unanimous verdict came in on all counts in the relatively short time after about 10 hours of deliberations seem to indicate that they indeed thought it was a fairly easy decision.

The judge told the jurors that they are free to discuss the case and so we may hear from some of them about how they arrived at their verdict, though given how vicious SSACFT’s supporters are, some of them may well decide to lay low and not give any interviews. If I had to make a guess as to why things went south for the defense, it would be that SSACFT’s lawyers had no choice but to follow his directions and he was adamant about denying that he had ever had sex with Stormy Daniels. The case that he had done so was strong that jurors may have decided that since he was lying about that, he could just as easily have been lying as to the reasons he gave for the money given to her, which was the heart of the falsifying of business records case. If he had simply admitted the Daniels liaison and said that he paid her off to avoid embarrassment, that might have been plausible. But we will not really know what sank his defense until some of the jurors talk.

As is no surprise, SSACFT and his toadies in the Republican party are using this verdict to furiously discredit the judicial system entirely, arguing that somehow Joe Biden was pulling the strings on the prosecution, even though this was not a federal case and the Manhattan district attorney’s office operates independently of the department of justice. But while they may try to paint the judge and prosecutors as motivated by animus towards him, it will be a harder sell to do that with the jury. They will try to argue that the entire area that produced the jury pool is biased against him but that is difficult to sustain. About 200 people were in the pool initially and there was a careful weeding out process before they got to the final twelve and SSACFT’s lawyers participated in the process. But in the MAGA world, reason is absent and they think nothing of tarnishing the institutions of democracy without evidence or logic in order to serve their narrow interests.

Sentencing is on July 11 and that should be very interesting. Usually upon conviction, defendants try to get a lenient sentence by expressing remorse for their actions. We saw this with many of the January 6th defendants who said that they were sorry that they took part, that they were misled or were not thinking straight or something along those lines. While the sincerity of their repentance can be questioned, the fact is that that they felt that it was a good thing to do. I simply cannot see SSACFT doing this. It is completely against his way of doing things to ever say that he was wrong about anything or to express any kind of remorse.

He has also repeatedly attacked the judge and did so even after the verdict came in. Although I think that judge Merchan must have been irritated by this puerile behavior, I doubt that he will give him a prison sentence, though he could. These types of cases, and the fact that SSACFT is a first time offender, would make that unlikely. But he can issue fines, community service, probation, house arrest, or a combination of all four.

I do not know what Merchan will do but I would love to see someone as selfish and self-centered as SSACFT be required to do community service. For most convicted felons, community service would be seen as getting off lightly. But for him, that would be far more humiliating than even going to prison or being put under house arrest. With those, he could play the role of martyr. But with community service, you are required to work on behalf of others in public and that will really stick in his craw. The idea of him being required to do street cleanup or something is really appealing

The New Yorker has released next week’s cover early, small hands and all.